User:KellyCHardy/sandbox

Blacknight
{{Infobox Domain Registrar and Hosting Company Founded=2003
 * name=Blacknight
 * type=domain registrar and hosting company
 * status=Active
 * website=

About
Blacknight is an Internet Domain registrar and web hosting company based in Carlow, Ireland. Blacknight has been named the number one registrar and hosting company in Ireland for 2010 and 2011. Blacknight is ICANN accredited and entirely Irish owned and operated.

The company is known for their irreverent approach to marketing and outspoken stance on Internet Security.

Blacknight is a member of the IIA, ISPAI, INEX, RIPE, AFNIC, Nominet and i2 Coalition.

Accreditations
Blacknight is directly accredited with a growing number of domain registries including Nominet, Centralnic, AFNIC, Eurid, DNS.be and several more.

Partnerships
By partnering with innovative companies, like Parallels, Realex and Comodo, Blacknight Solutions is able to bring 'best of breed' technologies to the Irish and European markets, while maintaining an aggressive pricing model.

Blacknight is also a Microsoft Certified Partner, holding the Hosting Solutions competency.

History
Started by Michele Neylon and Paul Kelly. Blacknight was originally founded as a hosting company.

In 2013, Blacknight began construction on a massive, in-house “green” data center.

CEO Michele Neylon
Known for his outspoken opinions on technology and the Internet, Michele Neylon is the award winning author of several blogs and co-host of the Technology.ie podcast. A thought leader in the Internet community, Neylon is active with ICANN and an expert on policy, security, ICANN, Nominet and Internet Governance. Michele Neylon has been heavily involved in ICANN since 2006 and was elected Secretary of The Registrar Stakeholder Group in 2012.

Neylon is a frequent speaker at conferences, weighing in as an expert on registrar and Internet security issues.

CTO Paul Kelly
CTO and co-founder of Irish registrar and hosting company Blacknight, Paul Kelly is a guru of all things technical. Having co-founded Blacknight at the age of 24, Kelly spends his days dreaming up new products and re-inventing existing services. Kelly is also a member of ILUG(Irish Linux Users Group) and SAGE-IE (system administrators guild of Ireland). Passionate about philanthropy and open source technology, he enjoys long walks in the hills, Cloud computing and the mechanics of data centres.

Blog
The Blacknight blog, which calls out political figures, educates customers on cyber crime and advises on everything from gadgets to Internet policy is widely read. The company uses the blog not only to promote their services but also to educate their customer base on cybercrime, how the Internet works and techniques to create a much richer online experience. The Blacknight blog won the Irish Social Media Award for Best Business Blog for 2011 and 2012.

Marketing
Blacknight are known for their irreverent and offbeat approach to marketing. The company uses wit and humor to educate the public on a range of issues from CyberCrime, purchasing domain names and encouraging customers to creatively use domain extensions in their personal online experience.

Services
Blacknight provide domain registrations, hosting, cloud hosting and storage, SharePoint services and business email. Blacknight regularly offer discounts on these services.

2nd level

 * .co
 * .me
 * .ey
 * .biz
 * .ie
 * .cat
 * .com
 * .net
 * .org
 * .be
 * .it
 * .info
 * .mobi
 * .tv
 * .name
 * .tel
 * .xxx
 * .am
 * .ch
 * .es
 * .gg
 * .gl
 * .gs
 * .im
 * .io
 * .je
 * .li
 * .me
 * .ms
 * .sh
 * .tc
 * .vg
 * .ie
 * .eu
 * .AC
 * .AG 19
 * .ca
 * .bz
 * .fm
 * .gy
 * .hn
 * .ht
 * .lc
 * .ms
 * .nu
 * .sh
 * .tc
 * .us
 * .vc
 * .vg
 * .ws
 * .cm
 * .sc
 * .asia
 * .cc
 * .in
 * .io
 * .la
 * .mn
 * .tw 6

3rd level

 * .co.uk
 * .co.nl
 * .co.uk
 * .de.com
 * .eu.com
 * .gb.net
 * .me.uk
 * .no.com
 * .org.uk
 * .ru.com
 * .se.com
 * .se.net
 * .uk.com 13
 * .uk.net
 * .ar.com
 * .br.com
 * .l.lc
 * .p.lc
 * .qc.com
 * .us.com
 * .uy.com
 * .co.za
 * .za.com
 * .ae.org
 * .cn.com 12
 * .com.tw
 * .idv.tw
 * .jpn.com
 * .kr.com
 * .org.tw
 * .ru.com
 * .sa.com 7

Hosting
Blacknight offers a variety of hosting services. These include:


 * Shared Hosting
 * Hosted Exchange
 * Hosted SharePoint
 * Cloud Hosting
 * Dedicated / Colocation
 * Mobile Friendly Hosting (goMobi)

Support
Blacknight offers comprehensive, 24/7 support as well as tutorials they also offer support forum and knowledge base.

Whoowns.it
In 2013, Blacknight launched a domain lookup service to bridge the gap in reliability of existing whois search services. Blacknight partnered with BuyDomains, the leading company in Domain acquisitions worldwide, to assist users in acquiring desired domain names that are already owned by someone else.

Getting Business Online:
In 2011, in conjunction with Google, Blacknight launched the Getting Business Online program designed to assist Irish businesses that were not already online, break in to that market. Blacknight gives free domain names and web hosting services for one year to any Irish business new to e-commerce.

Blacknight continues to support getting business online and sponsors related events in the region.

Involvement in ICANN
Blacknight has been involved with ICANN since 2006. In 2012, Michele Neylon, Co-founder of Blacknight was voted secretary of the Registrar Stakeholder Group of ICANN. The Registrar Stakeholder Group is one of several Stakeholder Groups within the ICANN community and is the representative body of domain name Registrars. It is a diverse and active group that works to ensure the interests of Registrars and their customers are effectively advanced.

Neylon became Registrar Stakeholder Group Secretary on October 16th 2012. The Secretary assists the Chair in conducting Stakeholder Group business. The Secretary's duties include recording proceedings of the Executive Committee and the full Stakeholder Group, organizing Stakeholder Group meetings at ICANN events and conducting votes and elections. Neylon is the only European member of the executive committee.

BK Stance on Fake Pharma:
Blacknight take a hard line on cyber crime, particularly anything that can be funneled through them directly such as Fake Pharma. Blacknight are partnered with Legit Script to an anti rogue pharma firm will allow Blacknight to ensure that no fake pharma will be funneled through their channels. LegitScript currently works with Registrars for no charge, providing complimentary notifications and serving as an “outsourced” abuse team on rogue online pharmacy issues.

SOPA
In January, 2012, Blacknight took a very public stance against a bill referred to as Ireland’s SOPA with Michele Neylon telling several news outlets: ''Ireland has a healthy digital economy, an economy that we at Blacknight are proud to be part of. International companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, EBay, PayPal and many more have chosen Ireland as their European home. The introduction of this sort of legislation without proper debate and discussion and without the full ramifications of the legislation being considered could only have negative impact on the digital industry and the Irish economy as a whole.''

The initiative was eventually dismissed.

Blacknight Stance on Closed Generic New TLDs
Blacknight spearheaded a letter to ICANN in 2012, urging the organization to closely consider the applications of organizations interested in operating closed, non-trademarked, generic, “key word” TLDs. These words include .blog, .cloud and .music among several others. The letter also urged ICANN to consider the adoption of a process in which New gTLD applicants who wish to operate a closed (not open for public registration) TLD, meet certain, transparent criteria.

The letter suggests that to gain an exception, a registry must only use the TLD for its exclusive use, not make domain names available for public registration and provide proof that application of this Code of Conduct to the TLD is not necessary to protect the public interest.

The result of this letter was the ammendement of several applications by the applicant for such terms.

Technology.ie podcast
In 2012, Michele Neylon and Conn Ó Muíneacháin launched Technology.ie, a weekly pod cast focusing on the tech industry.

The podcast is collaboration between Neylon who is the founding director of Irish registrar and hosting company, Blacknight and Ó Muíneacháin of EdgeCast Media, a radio and digital media production company. Both gentlemen are well known in the Irish Internet and technology communities.

While both Blacknight and EdgeCast are technology companies, Neylon and Ó Muíneacháin seek to deliver content that reaches farther than their respective industry niches.

Irish Social Media Awards
Blacknight are the winners of the Irish Social Media Award for Best Business Blog for 2011 and 2012.

Philanthropy and Sponsorships
Blacknight regularly sponsors, Measurement.ie, the cork lifelong learning festival, Irish Web Awards, 24 the web, net visionary awards, earth race, Bloggers International and Karma Enduro.

Support of Catalan community
Treading new water in registrar advertising, Blacknight used Facebook to reach out to the Catalan language community by addressing them exclusively in Catalan and offering online opportunities to the Catalan community.

HosterStats
According to the July 2012 Hosted Domains Report, Blacknight is the first Irish hosting company to break the 100K mark in terms of domains hosted.

The registrar and hosting company, which is known for its innovation in the domain space serves 39% of the Irish market. Blacknight hosts more domains than any of its competitors.

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